BlackBerry Z10: Vodafone confirm January 30th availability

We’re still itching to get to the BlackBerry Z10 launch event in London tomorrow which will serve as one of many are holding across the globe RIM to celebrate the arrival of their new OS: BlackBerry OS 10 and of course the Z10 – the device which will debut the OS.

Just yesterday Carphone Warehouse indirectly gave us a SIM-free price for the upcoming flagship, and now Vodafone have confirmed availability for January 30th alongside a few other nuggets of BB10 goodness. The Verge received photos apparently sent from a Vodafone UK employee detailing an internal notice about BlackBerry 10 and its impending launch.

As the document states, the key aspects to be aware of are that Vodafone UK stores will make BlackBerry 10 devices available for purchase from 5pm tomorrow (the 30th) and at launch, only black Z10’s will be on offer, although a white variant is set to follow soon. Interestingly unlike all previous BlackBerrys, BB10 devices won’t require BlackBerry services as part of their contracts. Previously elements like email and internet required that the user had access to a BlackBerry plan, which usually added cost. This was a requirement by RIM to fund the maintenance of their BlackBerry servers, servers which manage the majority of the mobile data and general traffic created by BlackBerry handsets.

At launch, BlackBerry Z10s will be available on Vodafone’s typical smartphone contracts, with £47 a month offering up 3GB of data and unlimited minutes and texts with a free handset for 24 months. PAYG customers won’t yet be able to nap a Z10 from Vodafone but the document also confirmed this option is in the works.

January 29th, 2013

We are just days away from what could be a significant corner turned in RIM’s current direction as the launch of BlackBerry OS 10 takes place. We’re all but certain that with it, we’ll also be able to steal a good long look at the two new handsets anticipated to serve as the poster children for the OS: the L-Series and N-Series handsets.

The flagship, currently known as the Z10, is on track to head things up and although we’ve already seen a lot of unofficial shots of the upcoming handset, @evleaks have a pair of far more press-friendly images to whet our collective appetites, but that’s not the crux of the most recent developments around this device, with the price being the juiciest tidbit to emerge.

A photo showing a monitor apparently linked into Carphone Warehouse’s system is seen displaying the not yet available BlackBerry Z10. The handset is listed as being available in white although thus far we’ve only seen black versions of it and what’s more it comes with a price tag. The tipster who sent in the shot to Engadget was explicit in that the price listed is in reference to a SIM-free version of the forthcoming flagship. Although we’re not sure of availability elsewhere beyond the likes of EE, Carphone Warehouse are citing the price for the Z10 at £480, slotting it in under some rival flagships like the iPhone 5 and Nokia Lumia 920.

BlackBerry Z10: Are RIM hoping that a lower price tag than their rivals will help pull in sales at launch?

We’ll be in the company of BlackBerry OS 10 and assumedly the Z10 too come this Wednesday as we attend the London arm of RIM’s international launch event. Check back to see what happens.

January 28th, 2013

It’s no secret that RIM might not survive the year if their next big play doesn’t come off, but as it stands, there’s a lot of positive interest mounting around the first of the company’s brand new smartphones. We’ve known for sometime that BlackBerry OS 10 will debut on two devices, one being an L-Series handset and one an N-Series, with the former featuring an all-touchscreen design and the latter a hardware QWERTY component. Now we have a name and a much clearer face to put to the flagship handset, in the form the of BlackBerry Z10.

As we discovered last month, the first wave of BlackBerry 10 devices is landing in the UK on the 30th January and we can now expect the Z10 to lead the charge. The photos shown here were originally posted on Arabic blog fou6an.com and as well as offering up the clearest pictures of the handset to date, we also have a few solid specs to work off, although the final hardware could still change before the month is out.

The post’s author Ali states that the BlackBerry Z10 comes with 16GB of internal storage, with no mention of expandability, 2GB of RAM, 3G, the fabled BlackBerry browser (as mentioned in our BlackBerry 10 information piece), which is now known to support Adobe Flash, an HD display and a half decent camera with an LED flash, something BlackBerry’s of old aren’t really known for possessing. The picture of the iPhone 5 in this set is said to have been taken on the pre-release Z10, but gives us a good indication of what we can expect from the release handset.

We’ll likely get some hands-on time with the BlackBerry Z10 ahead of its official release at the end of the month, but until then, these images will have to be enough to tide you over.

January 3rd 2013

We’re already very aware of how RIM intend to play the launch of BlackBerry 10, at least with regards to the device consumers will first get access to. Following on from the delays of the OS itself, we now know that the first BB10 handset will arrive no later than March 3rd and this is what it’ll look like.

Of course being ahead of any official announcement, the handset on display here had to undergo the blurry treatment before making it online, but the all-touchscreen L-Series device will be the first of RIM’s new smartphone, sporting the latest version of their smartphone OS, BBOS 10.

The images came from the depths of Twitter, but have subsequently been removed. Fortunately, tech blog TechSuplex were able to gather them up before they were lost and a total of nine images featuring the L-Series create the whole set. The images were sometimes accompanied by small tidbits about the device, such as an incredible eight-second boot time and an inbuilt VPN feature.

The L-Series may be the first BB10 device coming to market at the start of 2013, but we’re also anticipating a more recognisable hardware QWERTY-toting N-Series handset and if we’re really lucky, the BlackBerry Aristo: the rumoured ‘super BlackBerry’ which offers hardware powerful enough to take on any of the competition’s finest.

November 28th 2012

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